'Til Death
Chapter 2
Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own 'em and I'm still poor.
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Life is eternal and love is immortal; And death is only a horizon, And a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight. --Rossiter W. Raymond
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Chapter 2
Dean picked up where they left off the day before. He made a lot of headway in gathering information, but none of it seemed to help narrow down the possibilities. His father was a genius at spotting patterns and while Dean had inherited some of his skill and did his best to learn, he wasn't yet the master that John Winchester was.
It was frustrating that John ran off on his own, but Dean had to believe that he had a good reason. At first, he and Sam thought that John was in danger or had been taken, but in the several months since he disappeared, he had sent the brothers a few text messages with coordinates. These coordinates led them to places where he wanted them to work jobs. Dean suspected these jobs were either to keep them away from where ever John was, or so that he would know where to find them. Either way, while Dean did as he was expected to do, he hated the situation.
Closer to home, he also hated the way his brother was feeling. Sam left the family to attend college, but when he told John his plans, their father lost his temper in a way Dean had never seen before. He ended up telling Sam if he was going to leave, to stay gone and that's exactly what Sam did. While attending Stanford University in California, Sam excelled in his classes and fell in love. Sam never told Jessica about his life before college. He made up stories to explain why his family was distant and why he was out of contact with them. His anger toward John made it easy to fabricate things about him, but he never quite managed to make Dean out to be a bad guy.
Dean knew Sam felt guilty for Jessica's death and he understood that, but he could tell there was something Sam was keeping from him. He tried to push all that aside so he could concentrate on the job at hand.
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"Hey." Sam answered his cell phone. "Find anything?"
"A lot of the same stuff we found yesterday. What about you?"
"I've been poking around and reading that community message board I told you about. I just found a post from someone who claims there's a group around here that's into necromancy."
"Bringing dead people back?"
"That's one form. Sometimes it's only to bring the spirit back."
"Any leads on this so-called group?"
"Not yet; nothing I'm confident about anyway. You on your way back?"
Dean noticed the anxious tone in Sam's voice. Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to leave him alone after all. "Yeah. I should be there in about forty-five minutes."
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As Dean drove back to the motel, trying not to obsess over his brother, he thought about what he knew of necromancy or conjuring the dead. Even the most basic divisions of magic contained references to necromancy. In medieval times, it was called nigromancy, meaning Black Magic, only later becoming known as necromancy because of Greek and Italian influences. Some believed there were two forms of necromancy. One, where the goal was to communicate with the dead for the purpose of obtaining information about the future or performing acts of which humans are not capable. The second form was physically raising the dead. John's research found that necromancers had never been able to truly reanimate the physical bodies of the dead, though the bodies could be controlled and manipulated by the necromancer.
But try as he might to keep his mind off Sam, Dean's thoughts turned to his brother. When they were kids, before Sam left for school, there was almost nothing Dean didn't know about him. Dean could read his younger brother like a book and always knew what he needed. Four years apart was a long time, though, and they were both different people. In some very important ways, Sam was a stranger to Dean now.
Sam's pain over losing Jessica scared Dean, though he would never use that word. It bothered him that his brother was going through something he couldn't understand or really help him with. It also bothered him that John was probably the one person Sam could relate to right now and he was ostensibly staying away from them by his own volition. But what bothered Dean the most was how much his gentle younger brother was acting like their father. John Winchester loved his sons, but he was a hard and bitter man. Those were not qualities Dean wanted to see in Sam.
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Sam glanced up as Dean walked into the room. He had scoured every Internet source he knew about and looked through every book they had that belonged to their father looking for references to necromancy. He told himself it was simply research for the job; he was trying to find more information that could lead them to the group mentioned on the community message boards.
"Got enough stuff there, Geek Boy?" Dean asked, seeing his brother on his bed, surrounded by the laptop and books.
"Just doin' my job." Sam said, a hint of sarcasm slipping out.
Dean tossed a folder containing the information he gathered onto the desk, then slipped out of his jacket and dropped it on the empty bed. "Find anything else?"
Sam closed the laptop. "No." He didn't look at his brother as he stood and stretched. Standing at the desk, he looked through the papers in the folder and added them to the piles he'd organized earlier.
"Have you eaten today?" Dean asked.
"I raided the vending machine a while ago." Sam answered absently. He was updating the map he'd hung on the wall with the dates and locations of grave robberies Dean investigated earlier.
"Uh - huh. What did you have?"
"So I noticed earlier that most of the desecrations happened on a Tuesday or Thursday."
"Huh." Dean joined his brother at the map hanging on the wall. "What did you eat?"
"Let it go, okay?"
Dean sighed, but he caught sight of something on the map and his thoughts changed focus. He stepped back for a moment then grabbed a pencil from the desk. He drew a line from the robberies in the order they occurred and when he was done, there was a perfect pentagram depicted on the map. The brothers exchanged a look.
"So…" Dean paused. "Does that mean they're done or they're going to start over at the first cemetery?"
Sam shrugged. "I don't know, but today is Tuesday. Wanna go hang out at a cemetery?"
"I thought you'd never ask."
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"Do you think it's weird the police aren't more interested in this?" Dean asked later as they were staking out the first cemetery to be targeted by the robbers. They were alternating between walking around, using the trees as cover, and watching the entrance to the parking lot.
Sam shrugged. "I'm more curious about the families – wait, you know, that's one angle we haven't really looked too closely at."
"What do you mean?"
"Are these random robberies, or requested by the families? Assuming we're really dealing with someone trying to bring people back, is he doing it for kicks or is he for hire? I can't believe I just thought of that."
"I blame the lack of sleep and food."
Sam stopped walking. "Will you get off that, already?"
"Not until you start taking better care of yourself."
"You're one to talk." Sam muttered.
"What does that mean?"
"It's not like you're Mr. Nutrition. Beer and nachos does not dinner make."
"You know what? I'm not going to let you do this. I'm not going to let you turn this around on me. You're not taking care of yourself and eventually it's going to wear you down. You're going to get sloppy and you're going to get hurt, or get me hurt –"
"Is that what you're really worried about?"
Dean rolled his eyes, trying desperately not to take a swing at his brother. "Don't be an ass."
Sam started to say something, but changed his mind. He started back on the patrol.
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They gave up around 3:00 and went back to the motel room. Dean was surprised that Sam fell asleep almost immediately and even more surprised that he was still asleep when Dean woke up just after 10:00. He made coffee and took a shower, both of which Sam slept through. With a full mug, he settled at the table and started to go through the information again. He made a list of the family members before booting up the computer to start the background checks.
Sam truly was better at researching vague topics than he was, but Dean could hack into all the right places to investigate just about anyone. While waiting for the machine to go through its diagnostics, he flipped through the notepad he'd written the family names on and noticed a page near the back with Sam's handwriting on it.
He looked at his brother, still sleeping soundly, and looked back to the page in front of him. "What the hell, Sammy?" he muttered, reading it again. No longer able to concentrate on the task at hand, Dean stood up and began to pace.
He stopped only long enough to refill his coffee cup, but was too charged up to drink it. He contemplated waking Sam and demanding answers, but knew that would do no good. It would only make Sam angry and he would retreat beyond Dean's reach.
Sam woke up, on his own, a few minutes later. Hearing him stir, Dean turned the note pad back to his list of names and sat down in front of the computer.
"Mornin'." Sam muttered as he sat up. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. "It's late. Why did you let me sleep so long?"
"You needed it." Dean said, glancing at him.
Sam rubbed his eyes. "You have breakfast yet?"
Dean shook his head. "Nah. I haven't been up that long."
"What are you doing?"
"I thought I'd get started on the background checks of the family members; see if there's anything there. I just got the computer started, though."
"I'm gonna take a shower." Sam said, tossing off the blankets and getting out of bed. "Then we can hit the diner. We can work at the library so we both can use a computer."
Dean watched as Sam grabbed some clothes from his duffle bag on his way to the bathroom. He knew a good night's sleep could cure a lot of things, but Sam's attitude change was nothing less of a miracle. Dean didn't believe it was genuine.